


Finding Home

by BardofHeartDive



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Pining, Post-Rannoch, Pre-Ilos, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 14:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardofHeartDive/pseuds/BardofHeartDive
Summary: Worlds and homes are lost and found.





	1. Ilos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olio/gifts).



> So many thanks to Dr. Paperback, Her Imperial Foxy-ness, and Mod and Organizer Extraordinaire Kahika for all their help with beta-ing, supporting, titles, tags, encouragement, and all their other help. You are all the best!

Shepard had told the crew to get some sleep but as the Normandy sped toward the Mu Relay, Liara couldn’t have been more awake. In a matter of hours, she would be on Ilos, a lost Prothean world. The thought made her dizzy and she took a steadying breath, trying to reign in her excitement. Shepard was depending on her knowledge of the Protheans to give them the edge Saren’s lacked. She needed to be sure she was prepared and had spent the time since their escape from the Citadel reviewing her notes and a few of her favorite texts.

She was halfway through an article on the impact of Prothean religion on their scientific and technological advancement, when she heard a voice in the medbay.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor. Especially with something so silly.”

Even through the shut door, Liara recognized it as Tali’s. Her pulse ticked up a notch at the sound of the quarian’s voice and she told herself it was just the academic opportunity that had been put in front of her.  

“Not a bother at all, just the standard cocktail,” Chakwas’s voice answered. “I was on my way to get some tea but you’re welcome to run your decontamination here if you like. I imagine it’s a little more comfortable than engineering.”

If there was an answer, Liara didn’t hear it, just the door opening and closing. She headed back to her datapads but when she found herself reading the same sentence for the tenth time fifteen minutes later, she put the articles aside and headed toward her own entrance to the medbay. The doors swished open and Tali turned at the sound.

“Oh! Liara.”

“I heard you in the other room. Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m, uh, fine. It was silly, really, just a minor suit breach. Which still means a decontamination sweep and a round of prophylactic antibiotics.” The quarian wrung her hands. “What about you? I thought you’d be sleeping?”

“I couldn’t,” she answered with a shake of her head. “I've been reading, trying to prepare.”

“You must be excited.”

“‘Excited’?”

Although the shock was evident in her voice, the reason for it was not, and Tali instantly back-pedalled. 

“Keelah, what am I saying? Going after a rogue Spectre and his army of . . . ” Liara hid her smile behind her hand and wondered if quarians could blush. “ . . . all life in the galaxy. ‘Terrified,’ maybe, ‘nervous,’ of course but ‘excited’ . . . I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Please.”

She offered Tali a seat on the bed, then joined her. It was hard to decide just how much space to keep between them and, once she was sitting, she thought she might have sat just a little too close. Tali didn’t scoot away though, so Liara stayed where she was. 

“When I was little, my mother would take me to museums whenever she could get away from her work. And I used to be so, so disappointed that everything was . . . contained. There was a display case and everything inside the display was Prothean and everything outside was asari. It doesn’t give you the whole picture of everything that book is. Dig sites are better but they’re still sectioned off. They’re still from a different world. But this, Ilos, it’s a world as it was. In a way, it’s going to be the best trip of my life.” She laughed and blushed a purple-blue asari blush. “I didn't think anyone would understand.”

“Quarians have some experience being out of place in the world around them.”

“Yes, that makes sense. It must be . . . hard.”

“It can be,” Tali admitted. “But then you find places where you fit in.” She leaned forward and Liara watched the shine of her eyes through the visor. “You find people who understand you. And you - ”

She was interrupted Shepard’s voice's voice over the comm, “Shepard to Ground Team. Change of plans; we’re dropping in the Mako. Gear up and meet in the garage in ten.”

Ashley confirmed her acknowledgment through the channel but Liara’s answer was only for Tali. “I have to go.”

“I know. I’ll walk with you.”

She waited while Liara gathered a few things, then headed together to elevator. Neither said anything, not when they left the medbay, not while they waited for the lift, not even on the painfully slow descent to the lower level did so much as a word pass between them. But when she took the first step out of the elevator, Tali called her back.

“Liara, wait.”

“Yes?”

“I just . . . ” She took her hand in both of hers and even through the suit’s gloves, Liara imagined they were warm. “I wanted to tell you . . . ”

“Yes?”

“ . . . Good luck.”

“Oh.” Liara swallowed her disappointment and clasped her free hand on top of Tali’s for a moment. “Thank you, Tali. We'll be back soon.”


	2. Rannoch

The Normandy would be leaving its orbit above Rannoch, newly reclaimed by united quarian and geth forces, in the next few minutes and, although Liara had been running errands throughout the ship, she hadn’t seen Tali anywhere. Daniels said she had checked in once the ground team returned but left Engineering around the time they had started the FTL checks. She didn’t know where she had gone. Liara had an idea though, and headed to the Observation Deck. She was partially right - Tali was there - but instead of finding her chatting with Ashley, who had been spending her free time there since she came aboard, she was alone, standing at the window. Even when the door whooshed open, she didn't look away from the glass.

“I thought I might find you here,” she said, coming up beside Tali. The quarian didn’t answer, or even acknowledge her presence and when the pause grew uncomfortable, Liara added, “Do you want to be alone?”

Still Tali was silent, but she did shake her head. Following her example, Liara simply nodded and turned her attention to the planet below them. Despite the time they had spent around the planet, this was her first time seeing it and her first thought was that it reminded her of Ilos. The surface had a slightly darker, greener hue, whereas the Prothean world had been largely a light yellow-brown, but they both had a similar pattern of continents and oceans, and white wisps of clouds in a largely clear atmosphere. A single moon, larger than she expected based on the planet’s size, was barely visible, peeking around the far side. It was beautiful.

She was so engrossed with studying the planet that she jumped when Tali’s hand found its way into hers. She didn’t pull away, though, and once her surprise passed she gave it a small, reassuring squeeze, and Tali broke the silence.

“That’s it. The homeworld I hoped to see. I’ve not only seen, I’ve been there.” She raised her other hand and opened it to reveal a small tan rock with rusty streaks through it. “I carry it with me.”

“How does it feel? How do you feel?”

“It’s strange . . . I’m supposed to be happy, right?”

“I don’t know,” Liara admitted with a small shrug. “I imagine in some ways it would be disappointing.”

Tali’s head snapped toward her. The visor between them hid her face but Liara imagined that their eyes met, and she wondered what she would have seen in them given the chance.

“It was the heart of the Flotilla,” Tali said, turning back to the window. “Everything we did, was to come back. It was our purpose, our reason. Now that it’s ours again . . . It’s not what I thought it would be.”

Liara smiled a little to herself and said, “If I’ve learned anything, in my time in archaeology and information, it’s that reality is rarely what we think it is.”

Tali’s shoulders drooped and she made a small, disappointed sound that seemed to get lost somewhere in her suit.

“But, it is real. Which is so much more important.”

“You know the strangest thing? Before my Pilgrimage, I always thought of this place as ‘home,’ even though I’d never seen it, and wasn’t sure I ever would. Then I came to the Normandy. I met Shepard, and Ash, and Garrus . . . I met you. There’ll be work to do here, after we beat the Reapers, and take back your homeworlds, and get the galaxy back to business as usual. And I want to be here, for that. For my people. But it’s not what I imagine when I think of home anymore.”

Liara shifted her weight, bringing them even closer, close enough that she was sure she could hear the humming of Tali’s enviro-suit. Tali went stiff and for one terrible moment she was afraid she might have misread the situation. But then she looped their arms together and rested her head on Liara’s shoulder.

“I’m glad you decided to come with us, Tali.”

“Me too,” she answered.

“Don’t worry; we’ll be back soon.”

The Normandy shifted, which they would not have noticed if the planet had not lurched sharply upward, and they stood silently together as it shrank to a pinprick, lost among the other stars.


End file.
